Ben Sasse, Senator In-Waiting

Midland University President Ben Sasse on Tuesday won the Republican nomination to replace retiring Sen. Mike Johanns (R) this year. Democrats won’t contest the state this fall, making Sasse virtually a senator-in-waiting.

But before jumping to conclusions that the tea party beat the establishment, note that Sasse doesn’t fit neatly into the outsider construct. Here are 14 things to know about Sasse, a candidate with an unusually diverse resume that includes time working within the system:

1. He’s a fifth-generation Nebraskan, but he spent much of his career in Boston, Austin and Washington, D.C. Sasse attended high school in Fremont, Neb., spent his summers working soybean and corn fields, then left to attend Harvard, Oxford and Yale.

2. Sasse has a PhD. He wrestled at Harvard, quarterbacked the Oxford football team (real football, we’re told, not soccer). In total, he has five academic degrees: A bachelor’s from Harvard, a Master’s from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., two Master’s degrees from Yale and a Ph.D.

3. His secret weapon: A bump on the noggin. Sasse has a long scar on the top of his forehead, the result of a childhood fall off a hayloft. When he wrestled at Harvard, Sasse jokes his secret weapon was headbutting opponents because he had no feeling in that part of his forehead (His standard line is that he didn’t go to Harvard for the superior academics, he went for the inferior athletics).

4. Sasse worked at some of the biggest venture capital firms in the country.He put in time at Boston Consulting Group, where Mitt Romney got his start, and at McKinsey and Company, where he advised companies like Northwest Airlines and Ameritech and government agencies in the United States and Iraq. He later taught part-time at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

5. He has experience in Washington. Sasse served in various capacities in George W. Bush’s administration, starting as chief of staff in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy. He consulted for the Department of Homeland Security and was a counselor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services until December 2007, when the Senate confirmed him unanimously as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.